Day in A Fairytale: Sintra, Portugal

I just read this nice post about Sintra, Portugal (http://garga-blog.com/snimki/sintra/) by a Bulgarian who has dedicated his blog to “people who don’t have work, even when they are at work.” 

I also visited the magical city of Sintra this past summer and wrote an article about it for a friend’s magazine, Paradox: http://issuu.com/paradox/docs/paradox_4_issue_press, pg 35-36 (in Bulgarian).  Take a look and I hope you are inspired to visit the place! 

The architects of this castle must have had more imagination than the creators of the Disney princess movies!

 

Some of the tresures of Sintra are this ancient fortress, the royal castle, and the luxurious villas of the old aristocracy.

 

Timeless Family Bonds in Kapatovo

Family bonds can be a marvelous thing! My mother and father were just spending the weekend in the house where he was born, in Bulgaria’s Melnik region. As they were taking a walk in the nearby village, someone recognized him as the son of his father. My grandfather had a good reputation in the region because our clan is old and well-known in Southwest Bulgaria.  The people who recognized my father invited him to sit with them. They told him we were relatives. My father didn’t recognize their family name at fist, so they explained to him how we were related:

A woman from their kin, Elena Talkova from the village of Harsovo, had married a man from our kin, Alexa Milyov from Kapatovo, over 125 years ago! She had a daughter and two sons,  the younger of whom was the father of my grandfather Alexa. Elena had died over a 110 years ago. Still, the family preserved her memory, and the two kinfolk still consider themselves relatives!

Later, one of my father’s uncles confirmed that over 50 years ago, we had family interaction with the Talkovi kin and that we will continue to perceive ourselves as one family as long as the successors remembered the family history.

I believe in preserving family traditions. That’s why my brother is also called Alexa, and I am named after my great-grandmother, Militza.